As you can see with this vote, elections do have consequences! Let’s not let them turn Pennsylvania into Wisconsin, no matter how many Koch-loving hacks we have in the state house: An attempt to pass a controversial amendment to a bill that would restrict union dues collection from state and school employees’ paychecks narrowly failed […]

So, Utah decided to just give the homeless places to live. The results are what anyone with sense, or who has followed the topic would expect: Utah’s Housing First program cost between $10,000 and $12,000 per person, about half of the $20,000 it cost to treat and care for homeless people on the street. Imagine [...]

1.)To Digby, Corey Robin, et al, regarding whether the recent set backs in the rights of women in America have something to do with protecting the influence of the traditional hierarchy in the home, you’re not quite seeing the whole picture. The backlash against women started about the time that more women were moving into the workforce, competing with men who used to get all the good jobs, frequently with little more than a high school diploma. This was also about the same time that african americans were moving into the middle class. It also roughly corresponded with a lag in wages compared to productivity. We should do more research to find out if there is a correlation and what it is.

I think the push to put women “back in their place” has less to do with protecting the home than to protecting the traditional privileges of the workplace. How can we decide which is the case? We can look to countries with better and worse gender equity scores than the United States and do some comparisons of what cultural and legislative changes they have made in the past 100 or so years. My gut feeling is that we are experiencing a backlash because we have rewarded the persons who promote it via their outsize representation in the media and through their culturally protected religious affiliations. It is OK these days to say racist things and insult women by referring to them as sluts. No harm done, says Limbaugh and the Fox News team. There’s no law against being an ignorant bigot.

In other words, the language is being used in the service of the previously privileged. It was and always will be the economy, stupid. When money gets tight, women should get the f^&* out of the way and go home. Making it hard for her to get out of the house when she’s tied to babies and lacks good childcare serves the guys very well indeed. They’re just all hoping it’s the next guy who has to put up with the domestic situation, not them. It’s purely opportunistic.

As is usual with intelligence matters, the United States Embassy had no comment on the expulsion request. But in a statement, the embassy also said it was essential to maintain close cooperation with the German government “in all areas.”

Ms. Merkel, speaking two hours before the expulsion request was announced, said in response to reporters’ questions that spying on allies was “a waste of energy.”

“We have so many problems,” she said. “We should focus on important matters.”

Waste of energy indeed, not to mention money. Money that could be used on mass transit and infrastructure improvements that the Republicans seem to think are unnecessary. I guess it’s OK if New Jersey looks like Mississippi. Mississippi might be what America looks like to Republicans and NJ is just being uppity. How would they know the difference? Come to think of it, I’m tempted to start a “…You might be a Republican” thing. Like, If your friends would describe you as a greedy old prick, you might be a Republican. Or If they would describe you as a grumpy old prude, you might be a Republican.

Wait, I’m getting off topic.

Yeah, don’t spy on your friends. It’s unnecessary.

3.) With tensions and rockets flaring in Israel, be prepared for your local fundamentalist Christians to be almost ready to pee themselves with delight at the impending rapture.

4.) To the Republicans who are itchin’ to impeach the president- DO IT! Yes, by all means, find something to nail on him. Tie him up with congressional hearings. But please, do it Blitzkrieg style, ok? Don’t waste any time drawing the whole procedure out. Wrap it up quickly. Better yet, take Biden down first. Then we can appoint Hillary to VP while you guys go for the jugular. Then when Obama is forced out, Hillary can step up to the presidency. It will save us a lot of money in 2016. And it’s what everyone wants anyway. You’d be doing us all a big favor. Oh sure, we’ll have to put up with your nonsensical grandstanding and foaming at the mouth over a guy who is mostly ineffectual rather than criminal but when has reason ever curbed you and your destructive waste of legislative privilege? Just do it and make it quick.

5.) When you’re planning your next kitchen renovation, do yourself a favor and pick the refrigerator first. Make sure that the one you want will fit through your doorways and won’t bang into the expensive teak cabinets you just had to have above the refrigerator. Because once those cabinets are up and you’ve spent thousands of dollars getting the look you want, you are going to have a hard time taking them down to accommodate the behemoth refrigerators that appliance makers are manufacturing these days. If you have a small kitchen made smaller by those annoying cabinets that are only good for seasonal ice buckets and Rubbermaid containers, you should know that appliance makers don’t really make a lot of nice refrigerators in the small to medium category. Yes, they are still living in 2008. Adapt accordingly.

The cables are out and now is the time to sift through them and come to our own conclusions about what they contain. For those of you who want a running commentary, Peter Daou recommends Greg Mitchell’s blog at The Nation.

I’m not surprised that we’re spying on UN officials and gathering intelligence from around the world. Didn’t we learn from Joe Wilson that diplomats are sometimes deployed to get information about uranium shipments? Even a Democrat must understand that keeping tabs on foreign nationals who reside in our country and are operating at a high level in world affairs should be monitored. We legitimately object when our government spies on American citizens but I’m pretty sure that even Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson understood the value of keeping your foreign friends close and your enemies closer. Let’s not be naive and let the world head for the smelling salts. If Hillary authorized some of the surveillance, it shouldn’t come as a shock. That’s her job. What’s more important is how discriminant she or her predecessors were in applying it.

What is more surprising is how the NYTimes reports a remarkable lack of agency with these cables. There is no indication who sent them or with what authority. Are we to understand that no one in the Bush White House was responsible? Things just happened? Who should get credit for negotiating hard bargains in the current administration? Specific people cause specific things to get done or not get done. The NYTimes is cheating the casual reader of knowing who is responsible when the agents are referred to so vaguely. The paper needs to clarify when the actions were taken and by whom. I think we will all wait in vain for level headed analysis. The reader is advised to dig into the cables and consult multiple sources for discussion.

The report from the Foreign Affairs Council, which includes retired ambassadors and senior diplomats, also said morale is dropping among diplomats.

“In the first two years of Secretary Rice’s stewardship almost no net new resources have been realized,” the report said. It noted that Congress has twice denied money for Rice’s plan to rearrange diplomatic postings away from the Cold War model, which was heavy on jobs in Europe, and toward modern challenges in places like China and India.The council found a severe staff shortage and holds Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice partly responsible. The State Department needs 1,100 more employees, especially since recent staff additions have gone to fill jobs in Iraq, Afghanistan and other difficult posts, the report said.

Back in the Bush era, when conservative ideologues started permeating the State department, some career diplomats quit in disgust and some of them quite publicly. Some were given an ultimatum: to serve in Iraq during the most dangerous period of the insurgency or resign. As the WaPo article reports, Rice had a hard time getting funding. None of these problems have gone away. The Secretary still has to ask Congress for money. The ideologues are still there. Let’s keep this in mind as we read through these cables. Bush screwed up. Putting it back together requires hard work and ingenuity. The question is, will the people now in charge take responsibility? How much is the fault of Rice/Bush/Cheney? How much is still salvageable? Who has stepped up and who hasn’t?

Body: This paper, or pre-draft, or sketch, or whatever it is, started out with this title: "With The 12-Point Platform, this won't happen: An aristocracy of credentialism in the 20%." But then I realized I'd gotten in deeper than I thought -- one of those posts were the framework and the notes overwhelm the original idea -- and as it tur […]

This is a big bunch of catch-up, here, 'cause it's been a helluva few weeks. Gaius Publius interviewed Alan Grayson on Virtually Speaking, where Grayson discussed "how he 'cracked the nut' that allows him to get progressive legislation passed. Part of his secret - his goal is to be a person who 'gets things done for the progress […]